My Mission:
To improve our understanding of human nature in a way that helps to further human flourishing.
My Vision:
A world where human flourishing harmonizes with Earth's Life Systems
A thing like a global pandemic brings out both the best and the worst in us. The best, as we increase cooperative ventures, pitching in, volunteering, solving problems on the run, in order to save lives and keep essential services going. The worst, as individuals retreat within themselves, and create an echo chamber for their own fears and prejudices, both falling prey to, and actively participating in the spread of disinformation on the internet. The issue I want to focus on is the anti-vaccine movement. One of the largest components of this movement is made up of young men, age 20 -40, which suggests a group of people who are in good health, feel somewhat invulnerable, and don’t yet feel the full responsibility of raising a family. They claim that they are motivated by freedom - they wish to be free to act however they want, without being told what they can and cannot do. This is also a perennial adolescent theme, a theme that originates from being in a protected state wher
If Morality requires clear boundaries, fair and equitable rules, and active participation of group members in monitoring and enforcement, it resembles in some ways the conditions that make for successful long-term management of a Common Pool Resource. A C ommon Pool Resource , sometimes called a CPR , is a resource such as a body of water, irrigation channel, fishery, alpine meadow, etc., which is held in common. Common Pool Resources are akin to Public Goods such as public roads, in that, if they are available, they are available to everyone. The thing about a CPR that is different from a public good is that when one takes away from the pool, there is less in the pool. With public goods this is not the case. If I drive on a road, I don’t make the road less available to others. A Moral System can be seen as a kind of Social Capital ; something that’s necessary for human society to get off the ground; something that, once put in place, allows for trust cooperati
The philosophical problem common to both Plato and Rawls was how to form a just society. Plato’s solution was to institute a sustainable authoritarian state with the help of a “philosopher king”. John Rawls’ more modern idea was to build a social consensus around the form of the just society, by imagining an initial bargaining position, where, each participant, under a “veil of ignorance”, has “forgotten” their own socio-economic status. The idea being, that by abstracting out socio-economic status, the participants in this imaginary constitutional convention are more likely to agree to principles of equality and justice for all, that, just by coincidence, would resemble the modern welfare state. As a thought experiment, I suppose that is a fine thing to do, but I think the key to understanding what makes a just society is understanding the difference between humans and all other animals; and, (spoiler alert!) that difference has to do with our ability to create and maintain
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